Clean rooms, by their nature, must remain clean and free from debris and other contaminants. When constructing precision devices, such as hard disk drives (HDDs) for example, even trace amounts of contaminants can have serious consequences including malfunction, misreads, and even total device failure.
Screwing processes being performed in clean rooms underlie special conditions with respect to quality. However, the known screw feeder systems are insofar problematic. One problem replete with such systems is that when attaching elements to a work piece, debris from the element being attached can contaminate the device being assembled. Such debris is often found attached to the element as a parasitic contaminant (e.g., dust, metal filings, etc.), but may also be created by the actuation process, such as filings created during tapping of a screw.
Further, when an element is found to be incorrectly placed or coupled, prior art systems often require the system to be stopped and the element manually removed or adjusted. The loss of productivity and potential for contamination are apparent.
Therefore, what is needed is a handling and actuation apparatus that reduces the likelihood of contamination. What is further needed is a handling and actuation apparatus that avoids the lost productivity and potential for contamination due to removal of defective, mispositioned or miscoupled elements.